Phones Can Still Be Fixed -- If You`re So Disposed

The most surprising thing about the telephone repair business is not that so few companies offer such services, but that any do at all.

With the advent of the $9 drugstore models, it looks as the phone may be the next piece of merchandise to attain disposable status -- along with pens, cigarette lighters and diapers.

At the Telephone Warehouse in Lauderhill, partner Jim Prettyman stands amidst an array of phones -- shaped like lipsticks, mice and even a duck decoy that quacks instead of ringing, with a price tag of well over $200.

In one corner stands a selection of restored antique phones, beautiful brass and wood and ceramic instruments that stand in silent contrast to the advice that Prettyman gives to a number of customers each week -- that most of those cheap, newfangled electronic phones just simply aren`t worth fixing.

``A lot of people just throw these $9 phones away and say, `I should have gotten a good phone to begin with,` `` Prettyman said.

In the case of more expensive models -- like the quacking duck phone -- some phones are worth fixing. Cheaper models, however, just plain aren`t, and that`s the first thing you`ll hear from anyone who fixes phones.

``We just don`t take them in,`` said Bill Maronet, president of Marcom Inc. on Latham Road in West Palm Beach, when asked about fixing cheap phones. ``We just tell people, `Look, you`re better off just buying a new one,` and we don`t even sell residential phones, so we`re not trying to sell them something, we`re just giving them good advice.``

Another point phone fixers make is that there is no money to be made in the telephone repair business: Attempting to call those companies listed under telephone equipment repair in the Yellow Pages reveals that almost half are out of business.

``I would not go out and open a repair center without a store,`` said Telephone Warehouse`s Prettyman. ``You`d go broke.``

``The only one I know of closed down because people wanted to bring in their phones and get them fixed for $5,`` said Walter Serocki of American Telecommunications, on Linton Boulevard in Delray Beach. ``People are buying phones for $10 and they want to have them fixed for $5. To replace a part on a cheap phone costs $5. The guy who was running (the defunct phone repair business) charged a minimum of $10 and he couldn`t make a living at it.``

Those companies that still do fix phones also sell phones and communications sytems, offering repair services strictly as a customer courtesy. Most estimate that repairs are less than 1 percent of their total business, and none of the companies contacted said they made any money on repairs.

The Telephone Warehouse is sort of a court of last resort for folks with broken phones. Phones sold by Telephone Warehouse are under warranty, with repairs offered at discount rates after the warranties expire, starting at $5 for an inspection, which is then applied to the price of any repair, and ranging up to $18, plus parts.

At Marcom, American Telecommunications and Deco Phone on Northeast 33rd Street in Fort Lauderdale, repair prices range from $9 to $35 plus parts, depending on the type of repair.

Another firm, Advance Communications on Southgate Boulevard in Tamarac, maintains no repair shop, but sends technicians out in trucks to make house calls -- ``Just like Bell used to,`` said owner John Holcomb. Advance charges a flat rate of $45 for one hour.

Prettyman, whose repair center looks like Alexander Graham Bell`s version of an auto junkyard, noted that he had to tighten up on the warranty requirements not long after the deregulation of the Bell System that prompted everyone from K mart to street vendors to start selling phones.

``For a while we found ourselves fixing not only Telephone Warehouse phones, but everybody else`s as well,`` he recalled. ``We were becoming the godfather for the whole telephone industry in South Florida.``

Dealers offering specific brands of equipment, such as Toshiba, Panasonic and AT&T phones, also offer repair services, but only on models they sell, while suppliers of business communication systems all offer warranties, repairs and service contracts.

``Our repairs run anywhere from $9 to $35,`` said Cliff Ketch of Deco Phone. ``Anything over $35 we wouldn`t do it -- it`s not worth it to our customers when they can replace the instrument for a few dollars more.``

At AT&T, however, enough customers opt to repair phones to keep 19,000 technicians employed nationwide in the company`s repair divison. That number doesn`t include those technicians who make repairs in weekly visits to local PhoneCneter stores, said Barry Johnson, media relations manager for AT&T in South Florida.

The repair charge for AT&T phones not under warranty is $25. For complicated repairs, the Phone Center stores send units to a regional repair center in Atlanta, with the entire process taking seven working days, Johnson added.

But for those who bought their phones on a Blue Light special, it remains impossible to find repairers or prohibitively expensive to do. One repair center manager recounted the tale of a woman who used her neighbor`s receipt for a beige Trimline phone to try get her red Trimline repaired for free under her neighbor`s warranty. When the manager asked how the woman`s beige phone had changed color, she confessed that her red phone had been purchased at a discount store that had no repair facilities.

``We get many calls during the day from people looking to find someone to repair residential phones,`` said one business system customer service representative. ``That seems to be what there is a shortage of. Since people have started owning their own phones, now they find out that have to get them repaired themselves.``